Greek doctor guilty over fall death

Sunday 6 January 2008 00:02 BST

The family of a British holidaymaker who died after falling 40ft from a hotel balcony have been coming to terms with the fact their eight-year battle for justice is over following the conviction of a Greek doctor for manslaughter.

George and Pam Cummings have fought a very public campaign to convict the medical staff who treated their son Christopher Rochester.

The 24-year-old, of Chester-le-Street, County Durham, died in agony from internal bleeding after being left unattended on a hospital trolley while on holiday in Faliraki in June 2000.

Their struggle came to an end with a simple flick of a judge's hand as he announced unanimously Dr Stergios Pavlidas guilty of manslaughter by neglect and acquitted surgeons Georgos Karavolias and Mihalis Sokorelos.

There was brief pandemonium in the tense Rhodes court room as the chief prosecutor and lawyers for the Cummings family and Pavlidas argued about the sentence.

The judges then conferred again and with another flick of legal papers, ordered the junior doctor to serve a 15 month prison sentence, suspended for three years.

Karavolias was not in court as he claimed he was "too stressed" to attend the hearing and instead was represented by a lawyer.

Mr and Mrs Cummings sat quietly on wooden stools with Christopher's elder brother Keith, 34, and family friend Mary Weanns as a translator broke the news of Pavlidas' conviction. Mrs Cummings, 50, struggled to fight back tears on hearing the verdict and was comforted by her husband.

Afterwards, she said: "I am happy in respect that last night I really did not think that we would get anything. We were all under the impression that the doctors were going to be found not guilty, so yes, I am happy with the outcome. The other two can rot in hell."

The next stage for the family is to launch a civil case against Pavlidas and the Andreas Papandreou Hospital seeking five million euros damages (£3.7 million) but it was likely that the case would be settled for around 200,000 euros (£150,000).